Four: Juvenile On Display

  The adult is almost ready for her appearance in the pre-vis, while I worked on her I decided to create a quick turnaround for the juvenile state which textures aside is about finished. Lighting might take some playing around with as without an ambient occlusion node she appears quite dark but with some clever use of light-linking I am sure I can work around this as the model receives well-aimed directional lights very well. 

  I am quite happy with how the rig turned out. The controls around her eyes and for her tongue give some beautiful possibilities. I suppose while there is still some human-ness in her eyes, it works for her, that "glimmer of intelligence" as people say.

Four: Weighting the Skin and Facial Deformers

  I set myself a deadline for about the end of this week where my primary assets would be completed. So much of today was centred around binding the skin to the body and hopefulyl signing off and starting on the grub before the month is out.

  I tried a technique for blending the weights where the skin is flexible, such as on the webbing, to make it flow more organically between the toes. For the most part it appears to work, the skin blends and moves more smoothly than on the adult model (which may need revisiting at some point).

  Also in need of creation were some of the key blends for the face. In addition to the setups I created for the first model, I added a set of deformers for the cheeks, to allow Four to visible puff and huff. These deformers are set slightly inside the mouth so that when she motions, the interior of her mouth will hopefully move with the exterior.

  One problem I had previously rigging the eyelids was that when rotating, the control joints would move slightly in a direction that I didn't need them to. To alleviate this I considered an alternative method, where an EP curve would be constructed to find the midpoint.

  Stretching between the corners of the eyes, the EP curve was rebuilt with two segments, a cluster deformer was created so that a locator could be snapped to the middle, which was then moved slightly up and down depending on whether the lid was for the top or bottom. Then the joints were attached.

Four: Skin Improvements

With some discussion from Alan, work progressed today on making Four's skin look more skin-like.

I went back to using a MILA shader to make use of the subsurface mechanics, suggested that for best results in terms of light scattering, i needed to mock the consistency of wax.

With that done, highlights were needed. Using the specular map I had designed for previous shadings, I installed gloss and specular layers to the model. The gloss provided a highlight while the specular provided a tinge.

  With the subsurface working properly, she is looking considerably more lifelike than before. Her skin looks more like it has texture and consistency while the subsurface gives a satisfying tinge to more transparent parts of the body.

The next phase will be to add some difference to the colour of her skin, to give blemishes and areas where her skin might be thinner than normal such as on the cheeks, where blood is more visible. This will give hopefulyl a rosiness that gives her a sense of life that boosts the subsurface scattering going on.

Four: Juvenile Skin Specularity Tests

  Taking what I had done in the week prior, I've worked a little more on Four's skin. To give some resonance I added wrinkles in the texture and later the darkish green patch on Four's back to give her some interesting points.

  There's a little more to do, give her lips some colour, maybe wash out the butterscotch hue, to give the idea that as she matures colour comes to her skin.

  I played about with the reflectivity of her skin, to try and get the right balance of shine and spread.

  The fake rim light that exists appears to be doing its job rather nicely, but that does not mean I can't at least look into sub-surface shading. I feel I am definitely getting somewhere with this current model.

Four: Juvenile Skeleton Installed

  I dedicated this afternoon to installing the skeleton that would allow me to animate the Juvenile.

  It's not as complicated certainly as the previous model, and some components such as the eyes and tongue mechanism were salvaged from the adult model (and appear to fit well, fortunately, which saved some time.)

  All the joints are named so I'd say the next step is skinning the body to her joints..

  The emergent state of the fins is something of a blessing ,as it means less controls are needed to make the thing work. They're not as well-developed in this stage and that means that rigging them was far less complex a task.She's going ot have less flexibility on account of her pudgier and stubbier body so she's going to move slightly differently as well. She would have a much less graceful flow to her movements than she would have as an adult.

Four: Polished Juvenile, Now With Skin

  More time was spent today on Four. The primary tasks today were finalising the gemonetry, fitting the claws and creating the foundation for the skeleton.

While the framework for the skeleton has been established, With Mudbox, the ins and outs of Four's skin was sculpted. However after exporting I am conflicted as to whether a displacement map would work better to distinguish the folds. At an intermediate distance, like a full-body shot, the normal map works

  Some work still needs to be done with her skin, as right now it is just a repeated texture and lacking the details the adult has like around the eyes or the colouration down the back. I am tempted to go with the pinker colouration. The yellowish colouration appears dead and rotting.

Four: Inserting Younger Teeth

  I took a break this evening from dissertation writing to attend to the juvenile. It was a rather simple task: Install the teeth into his mouth. In order to not disturb the UVs I had worked on but still have room to work, Four's body was copied, lifted up and cut in half and was to act as a template for the full mouth.

The arrangement of the teeth and gums was done by adjusting the gums using a lattice deformer and then inserting the teeth back in one-by-one in order to minimise shape deformation. The roof of the mouth may be a little high, I had to buff it as the roof was very flat in the main model.

I attempted to neotinise the teeth in an attempt to make them fatter and stubbier to hint they are from a younger mouth, though perhaps some of them could do with a little more de-aging. And while I haven't got around to them yet, the claws will receive similar treatment in terms of reshaping.

Four: Juvenile Ready for Mudbox

My dissertation deadline is coming in so some priority has been switched to that. Earlier in the day however I dedicated some time to modifying the juvenile model. The aim was to make it ready for a session in mudbox to add the finer wrinkles and create an ambient occlusion map when mapping the skin. 

I left space so that once I transfer over the tongue, gums and teeth I can insert them into the map, hopefully in a way that I can save time by transferring some of the details of the adult's UV maps. The tongue and teeth, hopefully I can transfer over without a session in Mudbox remaking the layers.

Four: Juvenile Geometry Nearly Complete

  I neglected to upload yesterday but here is what I was working on Tuesday. I was working to refine the model, finishing some of the chubbiness of the juvenile's body and fixing the UV maps.

  Getting the 'stubbiness' of the juvenile's front fingers was a little more difficult as they are a little longer due to the extra bone in each finger compared to the toes.

  Yesterday was also used as a time to fix the mouth. This turned out to be a little more difficult that I first assumed as her more juvenile form mouth opens with a vertical mouthline. With the current head this was difficult but not as difficult as it could be as it was meant to be in a transition phase anyway. As Four gets older her mouth gets more normal-shaped.

  A modified mouth cavity however will mean the gums will need to be modified to fit the mouth. To fit the idea that these teeth are for a more childlike creature I may have to stub them or sink them into the gumline. I was partially inspired by canid mouths so the easiest solution will be a matter of researching how the tooth sets of puppies and kittens look. Or I go back to otters as they manage a certain cuteness with their teeth despite having enlarged canines like dogs do.

  As well as adjusting the gumline, some work still needs to be done on the UV maps. I've made a start with the larger areas and most are ready for receiving their mirrored versions already.

Four: Starting the Juvenile Form

  I made a start on the juvenile form today, as a start to the next tasks in preparing my animation.

  To save a lot of time and to keep it looking like it could mature into its adult state, Four's juvenile form used the adult as a template, preserving (mostly) UVs, foundation geometry and the shaders used to make her believable. SOme UVs will need fixing and remapping, as I had to break a couple of them to save on gemonetry.

  The posiive is that I feel like she's coming out better in this form now that I know better what I'm doing. There is still some work to do before moving on to installing the skeleton. I need to make sure her eyelids conform to her eyeballs, correct the base of her tail, neotinise her front fingers to they look more childlike and maybe give her a bit of pudge in her belly 

  The body of her juvenile form is very loose. Some gemoetry was adjusted to look like fat that would disappear as she got older and more mature The eyes and claws I can rather straightforwardly import from the completed model and resize where appropriate.